


Whoever wears his crown will share his grave

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [334]
Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: Character Death, Dark, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Manipulation, Family Drama, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Intrigue, Modern Royalty, Post-Canon, Revolution, Unreliable Narrator, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-24 02:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15620391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: Jack’s second coup was far more successful than his first.[snapshots in the same 'verse]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Whoever wears his crown will share his grave  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: post-series; character death; references to violence; mourning  
> Pairings: canon  
> Rating: PGish  
> Wordcount: 1900  
> Point of view: third  
> Prompts: Any, any male, he has a complicated relationship with his mother ; Any, any, empty words and hollow promises. ; any, any/any, a photograph is all that's left to remember them by ; Any, any m/m, In my dreams/you are always fifteen./You were bright and young/and I loved you best. (CLB) ; Any (except Buffyverse), any, “Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.”

Silas makes only one mistake when he locks Jack away with Lucinda, in a little-used wing of the palace, far from any who might be loyal to Jack above the king. Just one mistake, which takes patience to exploit, but all Jack has is time.

The first week of his imprisonment is lost in anger and fear, certain he’ll be executed any day. The next three weeks are lost in Lucinda doing her duty and drugs meant to make Jack compliant. After that, when the guards report to the king that the drugs make Jack unable to perform as well as compliant, he isn’t subjected to them again.

It’s worse, actually, but as the second month stretches before him, Jack decides to endure. To be patient.

There are four guards assigned to this hall, to this set of rooms that imprison him. Lucinda is allowed to leave during the day and only stays during the night, the one mercy Jack has been granted. Four men who have worked in the palace for at least a decade each: Michael, Victor, Adam, and Daniel. Four men Jack sees again and again and again.

Victor and Adam are his father’s men, through and through. Victor fought with the king in the army, before he was king. Jack doesn’t know Adam’s story, but his eyes are hard when he looks at Jack and he never replies when Jack speaks to him. Michael, though, has sympathy in his gaze, and Daniel—well, Daniel is nervous in Jack’s presence. He’s younger than the others.

He’s also almost definitely a plant, a trap, so Jack flirts with him hesitantly, just so that his father isn’t disappointed, but he focuses on Michael.

Once, his father had been magnificent, charming. The people loved him, his soldiers loved him, God loved him. But now, he’s become paranoid. The tyrant he always feared becoming. Bloodthirsty and ruthless, without the regret for necessities that used to temper him. 

Silas makes only one mistake when he locks Jack away Lucinda, and that is using the same four guards every day. Jack is charismatic, charming, and the son of the king. Though disgraced and imprisoned, he is still the king’s son, the king’s heir until Jack gives him another child. 

It takes a year for Michael’s loyalty to truly shift, but Jack is patient and gentle, and so very sweet. There are others, in the army, in the household staff, and though Jack does not give Michael any names, they find him, and slowly, Jack’s second rebellion grows.

If he fails this time, he will die. Either he will be king or he will be dead, and he doesn’t care which. But Gilboa deserves better than a maddened king, and so Jack will do what must be done.

It’s storming the morning he asks Michael, “Are you ready?”

Three shots, three guards falling with bullets in their heads. Lucinda shrieks, so Jack quickly grabs her, slapping his hand across her mouth. He hates touching her.

“My king,” Michael says, gesturing to Lucinda.

Jack nods, giving Michael a pleased smile as he shoves Lucinda away.

One more shot.

Michael reaches down and strips Victor, Adam, and Daniel of their weapons, offering each to Jack in turn. Once Jack has changed out of the lounge-wear that has been the only clothes available to him, he takes three of the guns, checks them over, and smiles at Michael again.

“First, Silas,” Jack commands. 

Michael bows. “Yes, my king.”


	2. Chapter 2

"Are you going to keep her confined forever?" Michelle asks, cradling her infant daughter to her chest, wary gaze on Jack.

Jack raises an eyebrow. “Our mother is treacherous,” he says calmly. He sees how Michelle hears what goes unsaid: _Are **you** treacherous?_

Michelle has only recently been allowed back into Gilboa, bringing with her Jack’s niece. Their father had confined Jack much like their mother is now confined, except (with Michelle in hiding in Gath) it was Jack’s duty to give the king a better heir than Jack or Michelle.

Jack’s second coup was far more successful than his first. He learned quickly, and brutally. Of his father’s men, none survive, nor any member of Jack’s bloodline—save Michelle, her daughter, and their mother. His own soldiers seek David in Gath, but surely David is finding his way home.

After all, Jack has David’s true love and David’s child. 

“Do you love me, sister?” Jack asks now. 

Michelle is free to move about the grounds, a bodyguard at her side and another at her back. Jack’s niece has two bodyguards of her own, the most loyal of all of Jack’s people.

The Princess Michelle nods with tears in her eyes. “Will you tell me my heir’s name?” Jack murmurs. He makes no move to approach Michelle or request to hold her child. Jack understands well how love entwines with fear and hate. 

“Hope,” Michelle manages before stifling her sobs.

Jack nods. “I wish you a pleasant morning,” he says before leaving her in her sitting room, wrapped around her daughter.

He goes to see his mother.

.

Jack’s advisors provide him with daily reminders that his mother should not have been allowed to survive the purge. So long as the once-Queen Rose lives, Jack’s throne is in jeopardy. His father, his uncle, his cousins, his younger half-brother—he did not hesitate because their deaths were a necessity. So why does his mother still live?

Perhaps for the same reason his sister and her husband do: he loves his mother. More than he hates her, more than he fears her, he still loves his mother.

“Jack, darling,” his mother says, without rising from her chair by the window, holding out her hands to greet him. It could be any morning from his childhood, any morning before he was captured by Gath and saved by a simple soldier.

(It would be so easy to blame David Shepherd for everything that has gone wrong since that horrible night.)

“Mother,” he replies. He leans against the doorway (left open) instead of going to her. She lets her hands fall with a gentle, disapproving frown. “Michelle has returned,” he tells her.

His mother smiles; he almost believes her relief is genuine. “That’s wonderful news,” she exclaims. But her eyes are sharp, assessing. Jack knows some of the household staff are still loyal to her. Purging the military and the council are so much easier than purging the servants.

Keeping the ex-queen (Queen Mother, some have begun calling her) alive is such a dangerous gamble.

“It has been three months,” his mother notes, rearranging herself in her chair to observe him more easily. “Has the regime change finalized?” _Will you kill me, my son?_ she doesn’t ask.

Her eyes are so sharp, his mother’s—biting and cold. He wants to trust in her love, as he did as a boy. He has learned his lesson well.

“Michelle has a daughter,” he says.

No surprise on his mother’s face, in her bearing.

“She will be my heir, the Princess Josepha,” Jack continues.

“Jack,” his mother says, gently, consolingly, “you cannot believe you will succeed. Your father was too beloved for his killer to be allowed to rule.” 

He smiles at her, the smile he learned from her, an empty smile. Michelle has always been so soft, so protected, so fragile. She never learned, for all that she is so smart. Too open, too honest, the sweet, adored Princess Michelle. She should have been born in any family but the Benjamins.

Jack, though, he is his mother’s son. His late father’s heir and executioner.

“You made your choice, Mother,” Jack tells her now.

She shakes her head. “God will punish you for your betrayals.”

“I betrayed no one,” Jack counters. “How can you betray your own betrayers?”

She wears her disappointment like a coat, letting him see it in her slumped back, her bowed head. But she will never bow to him, never accept him on his father’s throne.

Rose Benjamin is too dangerous to be left alive. There are too many people who are still loyal to her. Michelle will, eventually, see the rightness in Jack’s cause. Her daughter will know nothing else. David—Jack doesn’t yet know what to do with David.

Jack wants to ask, _Why did you choose Silas over me? Why was I never good enough? How could you kill my Joseph?_

To each question, he already knows the answer.

He pushes off the door, straightening his spine. “Goodbye, Mother.”

Her eyes widen. Her mouth drops open.

He leaves with her voice calling his name, and the door closes behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

“You have Gath’s trust and support,” Jack states, circling the prisoner. “You have Gilboa’s love, and the love of Gilboa’s princess. You are the hope of two countries, David Shepherd.” He pauses, to gaze down at the prisoner, who gazes up at him with calm eyes, loose bearing. He is shackled, forced to his knees, a gun to his head.

“What oath can you make that I could trust?” Jack asks.

“I love Gilboa,” David tells him, as sincere as he has been since he carried Jack out of that tent, barely conscious. “I love Michelle, and the daughter I have yet to meet.”

The throne will never be secure while David Shepherd lives.

“I love you, my king,” David Shepherd vows, bowing his head.

Jack wishes he could believe it.


	4. Chapter 4

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go,” Michelle tells him, weeping into his chest. Her daughter is asleep in the crib beside the bed, on the other side of the room from the window where they sit.

Queen Rose has been entombed beside her husband, the two of them laid to rest with a stately funeral only a few years overdue.

David Shepherd is still missing. Neither Jack nor Michelle ever mentions him.

Jack holds his sister, arms tight around her, cheek pressed into her hair, and does not admit aloud, _This is how it was always supposed to go._


	5. Chapter 5

After, Michelle quietly starts a scrapbook. 

.

There are, of course, official records. Histories. Eventually, legends. Portraits, too, both photographed and painted. Fictional books, biographies. Plays. 

Mother had so loved the theater. Father enjoyed music. 

But the official record, the creations for the people, Michelle avoids. Instead, she searches for the snapshots, for the fragile moments in time, when her parents weren't the king and queen but instead her mom and dad. 

They are few, those moments, and far in-between. 

.

On her fifth birthday, Hope asks, "What's this, Mommy?" and brings the scrapbook to her. 

Jack is sitting by the fireplace, merrily burning, a tablet in his hand. He glances up. 

Michelle avoids his gaze as her daughter climbs into her lap. 

"It's a book of memories, sweetie," she says. 

Her brother keeps his silence as she and her daughter page through the book. 

.

No images survive of David Shepherd. No one knows his fate. 

.

Tucked into the back of Michelle's scrapbook, there's a blurry snapshot of a laughing man, his blond hair messy and his eyes bright.

On her sixteenth birthday, the Princess Josepha Hope Benjamin brings it to her uncle the king and asks, "Who is this?" 

King Jonathan looks briefly at the photograph. "I don't know," he answers. 

.

Sometimes, Jack goes through Michelle's scrapbook. His fingers trace over his parents, not acting like royalty, not smiling for the masses—just smiling at each other, in love and happy. Michelle even included photos of Jack, so young he's forgotten how it felt, to be that bright child.

Paper-clipped to the last page is the snapshot of David.


End file.
